- Cellular phone antennas on almost every car - even beat-up Chrysler
K-cars. Far more successful than the "little red ball on the car radio
antenna" cult. Coming soon: wireless networking technology makes everyone a
24-hour a day employee (sans slack).

- Cutsey, gold-leaf "Espresso-Cappuccino" signs nailed up on almost every
building. Coming soon: new blight virus wipes out entire Colombian coffee
crop; price-gouging and widespread panic among hopelessly addicted coffee
house patrons. "Dutch Mocha Speedballs" become the new craze at "coffee"
houses. Look for bright new "Espresso-Cappuccino" signs on all buildings
and/or piles of rubble after X-day (Of course, YOU'LL be on those "escape"
saucers to planet x, right?). Nothing BUT espresso/cappuccino to drink, for
those unlucky enough to survive.

- Millions of consumers rush to be part of the "information superhighway",
spend huge amounts of money and time to browse "Net Shopping" WWW pages.
Meanwhile, world outside goes completely to hell. No one bothers to
notice.

I am summoned to relate a message telepathically implanted into me from
the terrible Uncle Dirtnap himself. He requests that all you wealthy
Subgenii (both of you) send gobs of money to Stang so that he can finish
and release the Subgenius/Negativland album. Such a harsh lashing of the
Conspiracy could only be managed by Dirtnap himself, but since he is
currently in hiding...waiting, we must bide our time with the skills of
Negativland and the biggie Subgenii. Do not believe for a second that
you can elude the wrath of Uncle Dirtnap if you do not fulfill his
request. He knows who you are. Do not be too surprised when you wake up
in a pool of your own blood and urine. Of course, you will simply
judging by the smell, for he will surely remove the eyes and place them
somewhere unpleasant. This warning is but a courtesy.
Rabbi Aaronius

In _The Hot Zone_, author Richard Preston describes the emergence of
new or previously unknown diseases so dreadful that novelist Stephen
King, the master of modern horror, calls the book "one of the most
horrifying things I've ever read in my life." The opening chapter
describes how Charles Monet, a Frenchman residing in Africa,
mysteriously contracted the Marburg virus, a tropical disease related
to dreaded Ebola. Monet deteriorated rapidly until, in the middle of
the waiting room at Nairobi Hospital where he had gone for help, he
"crashed and bled out."

That's military biohazard lingo for what happens when your internal
organs, disingrated and liquefied by the virus, along with massive
amounts of blood quite literally explode out of every body orifice,
teeming with higly infectious and lethal viruses. The book is
currently #3 on The New York Times Non-Fiction Bestseller list.
-----------
[emphasis added]

No wonder. The subject of new diseases increasingly worries a public
faced with ever-more-frequent reports of new "killer" viruses.
Perhaps even more disconcerting are reports of "old diseases we
thought we had conquered re-emerging from false extinction to wreak
their biological havoc on manking. Some recent examples:

* Westmister, California: Nearly 400 young people-30% of the
student body of high school- tested positive for tuberculosis
at least 12 of which were a drug-resistant variety of this
extremely contagious disease.

* Cincinnati, Ohio: In a rare epidemic of pertussis (whooping
cough), 352 cases were reported, compared with 542 in the
previous 13 years. Furthermore, since most victims had
been vaccinated, an unusually hardy strain of the pertussis
bacterium might be emerging. Nationwide there were more than
6,599 cases, the largest number in the past quarter century.

* American Southwest: The rare hantavirus, once unknown in the
U.S., emerged from deer mice to rapidly kill a number of
peoplem, mostly American Indians. The absence of media cove-
rage since then has left the impression that this threat has
vanished. But according to the federal Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC), "ongoing investigations of
hantavirus pulmonary syndrome document that the geograhic
distribution of this infection goes beyond the desert South-
West." Indeed, at least 30 people have died in as many as 20
states.

* Milwaukee, Wisconsin: In the spring of 1993, contamination of a
municipal water supply with the intestinal parasite
Cryptosporidiumcaused the largest outbreak of waterborne illness
in American history. An estimated 403,000 Milwaukee residents
had prolonged diarrhea, approximnately 4,400 persons required
hospitalization, and oevr 100 died because of the outbreak.

* Gloucestershire, England: An outbreak of the "flesh eating"
bacteria of tabloid fame (Streptococcus A). The common bacteria
that cause strep throat generally produce no lasting harm if
properly treated. But infections from certain virulent and
lethal strains of Strep A claim thousands of lives annually in
America and Europe alone.

"Emerging infectious diseases are defined by the CDC as "diseases of
infectious origin whose incidence in humans has either increased
within the past two decades or threatens to increase in the near
future." Since the early 1970's, Americans have been plagued by the
many newly identified diseases and syndromes -- AIDS, Legionnaire's
disease, Lyme disease, toxic shock syndrome, hepatitis C virus -- as
well as a host of old, once "conquered" microbial enemies.

And the list is growing.

From New Insights, newsletter for the Foundation for Human
Understanding, Vol 3, 1995.